Towards a novel interface design framework: function-behavior-state paradigm

In designing a human-computer interface (interface for short) for a complex work domain, the first question to be answered is what information should be presented on the interface display. The simplest answer may be: it depends on tasks to be performed by the human operator. In the past two decades, several studies towards a satisfactory answer to this question have been reported in literature, among which a study called ecological interface design framework is most sound. Motivated by a discussion with a nuclear power plant builder (in Canada) five years ago, we have conducted a study on the interface framework and obtained very interesting results. One of the salient findings is that the current implementation of the notion of the abstract function in the ecological interface design framework is worthy of further exploration. More fundamentally, one of its basic methods, called the five-level abstraction hierarchy used for work domain analysis, can be more commented on its architecture. Our findings are based on a critical analysis of published articles on the ecological interface design framework. We further postulated an alternative framework called function-behavior-state (FBS). We have conducted an experiment to compare these two frameworks, 66 which positively supported our findings. The present article reports the critical analysis of the ecological interface design framework and describes the FBS framework. The experimental study has been reported separately in this journal. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.